Wilting Flower
by kitsunelover
Summary: They fell in love during the cold, miserable war. Then the thaw came and life returned to the world, but they were trapped in their own glacial island. Depressing SSHG


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Wilting Flower

Disclaimer: Harry Potter is, pretty obviously, not my creation, and I'm not making any money off this. 

A/N and Warning: Rated R for very dark stuff: abusive relationship, murder, and self-mutilation/suicide. Oi vey. To think I came up with this for my two very favorite people in HP. 

The first time Severus had told Hermione that he loved her, she lit up with a transcendent glow, and he thought that no matter what else happened, he could live on that smile alone for the rest of his life. 

However, the war continued, and many more were lost. When Ron and Harry died, he comforted her as best he could, but always after that, some of her gorgeous luster was lost, and he hated them for dying and stealing away bits of his dearheart's beauty and carrying them into eternity.

As the strife went on, Severus lost many of his students, and the mocking knowledge that he had failed to turn them aside from their spiraling descents ate away at him. Hermione noticed, as he had watched her before, how quickly the shine her love gave him seemed to fade.

But even through this, they clung to each other like early morning dewdrops on roses. 

"Severus, you look pale," Hermione said once.

"My love," he replied lightly, "I would gladly shave off my hair and paint my bald head silver for you. However, as I burn easily, you will forgive my fair coloring as I can only stand the sun in small amounts."

"You know that isn't what I meant," she demurred.

"Hermione," he said quite seriously, "it is only because of you that I am not yet transparent."

Those words brought a faint smile to her lips, which compared to the first glow Severus had inspired in her as a candle compares to a roaring conflagration fed by wind and wood. Nevertheless, it was a true smile, and as those grew rarer, he meticulously counted and collected them as the stingiest miser does with his pearls.

But when the greatest blow came, it seemed even their fierce love for each other was no longer enough. Dumbledore fell, and this, many acknowledged, was worth far more than what they had received in exchange: Voldemort's permanent defeat.

All mourned the beloved Headmaster, but they couldn't stop from celebrating, either. Severus and Hermione had both got through alive, for which they must need be thankful, but neither was unscathed.

For them, peculiarly enough, the shadow did not seem to lift.

"Severus, the new Minister wants to meet you next week," Hermione informed him one evening.

"Tell him I can't," came the surly reply.

She frowned slightly. "I think it's important, Severus."

"To hell with the Minister!"

"You aren't doing anything next week," she persisted feebly.

"Damn it, Hermione, leave me alone!"

A resounding slap punctuated the end of his livid exclamation, and she was down on the ground. She stared at him blankly for a moment, then tears began welling in her large, sensitive eyes. In a flash, he was down on his knees beside her, apologies and self-reproaches flowing from his lips like quicksilver.

"Oh god, love, I'm so sorry, it was horrid of me! Hermione, I –,"

She wiped her eyes resolutely. Clearing her throat, she said quietly, "It's not your fault. It has changed both of us."

He never asked her what "it" was, but they both knew. 

And despite the initial horror and self-disgust that had flooded Severus the first time, he continued to lash out at Hermione. But each additional outburst brought no further apologies.

Hermione didn't protest or leave him, and for some reason, that angered him further. He was angry all the time now and felt pleasure only when he saw her tears and heard her screams.

While Severus grew bitter and sadistic, Hermione only became paler and thinner, and he viewed her now with only contempt and annoyance. She did nothing to improve his perception of her, but she did cling to her love for him, and bore up admirably under his cruel words and ecstatic blows. 

Finally, on an appropriately dreary day, Hermione looked Severus straight in the eye across the table and said, "You don't love me."

"What are you talking about?" Already Severus could feel his volatile temper rising, and though what she said was thoroughly true, he was still enraged, for some unfathomable reason.

The unusual display of her seemingly long-gone Gryffindor courage did not end as she asked rhetorically, "Where did it go?"

"Love? You want love?" he sneered softly. He seized a long, ivory-handled knife and raised it dangerously. "It died!" he roared. "_It died_!" 

He lunged at her, and she seemed to wait patiently for him to get there, for she was motionless and watched him passively, as was her wont of late. Again and again he stabbed her, her death-cries tantalizing his damaged mind, and when he could elicit no more sounds of pain from her broken body, he let it slide onto the ground, and he straightened up.

He looked down at her lifeless body and felt a strange, quiet sort of exhilarating satisfaction. Garnet ribbons adorned her alabaster skin and plain robes, and their streaming presence lent some glitter to her otherwise bare neck and arms. I did this, he thought, and was quite proud until he looked at her dull, glassy eyes and realized that she had been dead long before he stabbed her. Those eyes had been empty for a long time. 

He sat down heavily, for now he knew that the woman he had just killed was not the woman he had fallen in love with. And as those eyes gazed at him, blank and accusing, he suddenly knew that he was not Severus Snape. Severus had gone the first time he had struck Hermione, but neither was he dead. 

He closed his eyes and silver tears spilled down his temples as he took the knife and began slicing away the layers of cruelty and deceit and evil. They came away in fresh, gleaming scarlet and weeping, white slivers. He would continue to cut until he found himself; till everything but Severus was stripped away. And perhaps, when he was done, he could find Hermione. And they would begin a new life together, one untainted by bitterness or hatred or _darkness_.

A/N: Severus's term of endearment "dearheart" and the line about painting his bald head silver are both from Robin McKinley's _The Hero and the Crown._

I love fluffy, happy endings for SS/HG stories, but I decided there were way too many of them. Also, with all the canon evidence that he's a pretty nasty guy, and the fact that he's probably not going to get any better if the war is hard, it's equally likely that he and Hermione would have an unhappy ending. Hence my story. 

C&C welcomed. 


End file.
